Critics Agree That 'Prisoners' Is A Stroke Of Excellence: Review Round-Up
Prisoners is by no means your average crime thriller, and maybe that's why critics are swooning over the latest project form Oscar-nominated director Denis Villeneuve (Incendies); a kidnapping-based movie that promises to leave viewers questioning their own morals as to how far they'd go to protect their child. Starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal and the massively under-rated Paul Dano, the film has being widely praise since it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this month, with critics tipping their hats to the actors, director and everyone else involved for making one of the most memorable thrillers in years.
Jackman and Gyllenhaal star alongside each other in "an actor's duel"
The film is set in a rural American town and poses the question, 'how far would you go to protect your child?' When the unthinkable happens to Keller Dover (Jackman) when his 6-year-old daughter and her friend go missing, seemingly leaving no trail and no certain answers as to where they could be. There is one possibility as to where they could be though, and that's the dilapidated RV of neighbourhood creepy guy Alex Jones (Dano), which was seen only moments later in the same vicinity as where the two girls went missing. It's a test against time as Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) must get to the bottom of the crime before Dover gets to Jones and makes him pay for what he may have done.
"A film that seems headed toward one conclusion, then veers toward another over 2/₂ of the fastest-moving hours I've seen in a recent movie," a thoroughly impressed Lou Lumenick of the New York Post said of the movie. Meanwhile, Claudia Puig from USA Today was keen to comment on the "complicated moral questions" the film brings up, adding that this same question is used by the director to develop "an intricate, horrifying mystery with breathtaking skill."